


20/20

by Verasteine



Category: Alles was zählt
Genre: Domestic, Episode Related, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-31
Updated: 2011-03-31
Packaged: 2017-10-17 10:19:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/175811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verasteine/pseuds/Verasteine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's never told Flo why he'd been sick, but now is as good a time as any.</p>
            </blockquote>





	20/20

**Author's Note:**

> This was a quick comfort blanket fic to distract myself from the monster AU that's still in progress. Only then I let [](http://lefaym.livejournal.com/profile)[**lefaym**](http://lefaym.livejournal.com/) read it and she said I should share. Then she kindly betaed it as well, so I had no excuse not to post it. Enjoy!

"Do you remember when I was sick?"

Flo glances sideways, a slight frown marring his forehead. "What, the stomach flu that wouldn't die?"

Deniz nods. "That one."

"Yeah, sure." There's something hesitant, shuttered in Flo's eyes, and Deniz doesn't blame him. Probably, neither of them wants to remember that period. "None of you were talking to me, and..."

He lets his voice drift off, and Deniz smiles. There aren't that many years between them, but sometimes it shows in simple things, like Flo not wanting to put a voice to his insecurities. Deniz didn't at his age either, and he smiles again briefly when he realises it's Roman who taught him that. "I didn't have stomach flu."

Flo narrows his eyes. "You _were_ on detox?"

Deniz shakes his head. "No. I didn't lie about that; I wasn't doing drugs any more."

"But?" Flo looks at him. "Deniz... it wasn't something serious, was it?"

"No." He smiles briefly at Flo, trying to reassure him. "At least, it turned out not to be." In spite of his own willingness to breach this topic, he still finds it hard to talk about this. It changed his whole life, and it was a mess, and in a way-- He breaks off the train of thought before it carries him back into recriminations and things that are too hard to deal with on the spot. "Flo, I..." He rubs a hand over his face. "I had a one night stand, while high, and forgot to use protection."

Flo's response is comically quick and equally thoughtless. "But you weren't together with Roman at that time."

"No, I wasn't." Deniz sighs. "Flo, I had unsafe sex because I was high."

"Oh." He can see the wheels turning in Flo's head. " _Oh_."

"Oliver tested me for HIV, but there's a cocktail you have to take while you wait for the test results. The side effects... that's why I was sick."

"But the results were negative, right?"

Flo's anxiety is touching and saddening at the same time. Deniz feels older than twenty-one all of a sudden, older and tired, and wishing he could cut this conversation short and join Roman in their bedroom. "Yes, they were negative. But I spent weeks being worried I had AIDS. That's when I started thinking about my life."

"Uh huh." Florian looks like he's still processing everything. "Why didn't you tell me?"

The whole thing had been a mess, and Deniz had been surviving, and the only person he could trust and rely on was the man who was responsible for said mess in the first place. At first, it had been sheer relief to be able to turn to Roman, and later, sheer torture. "Flo, I-- It was hard enough to deal with without getting questions, do you understand?"

"Yes..." Flo is silent for a moment. "Roman knew. You told him."

The accusation audible there makes Deniz smile again. Buried deep beneath the layers that make up Florian Wild is the same insecurity that drives his brother's success. Deniz has never met the father who's responsible for it, and he's glad he hasn't; he doesn't trust himself to be able to look Egon Wild in the eye and not want to deck him. "Roman knew because he walked in on me right after."

"Oh." Flo makes a face, the same face of distaste he makes at every reference to anything gay. Deniz can't care.

He looks at Flo, holds his gaze. "Do you understand why I want you to be careful with drugs and alcohol?"

Flo makes a random gesture. "Well, yeah. But-- I mean-- I thought because of your dad, maybe, but I'm not--" He breaks off; whatever he was about to say wasn't positive and he's swallowed it rather than say it out loud.

"I know you're not," Deniz replies. "But you don't know what drugs can do, what alcohol can do. I've... This wasn't the first time I had a problem with coke."

"I know." Florian makes the same flailing gesture again. "I mean, I gathered."

"When you're high, you don't care. About anything, and that's a great feeling. I used to take coke because I wouldn't care..." Deniz trails off when he realises how that sentence was going to end.

"What?" Flo looks at him, frowning. "You can't shock me, you know." He shrugs and grins. "Come on, I'm not a kid."

 _You are_ , Deniz wants to say, because in some ways, Flo is still so young, more innocent than Deniz had been at his age, even though he'd still been in high school and Flo was already working.

"Okay," Deniz says instead. "I... Roman and I had broken up, and I was seeing Vanessa." He smiles at the way Flo's eyes nearly pop out of his head and his mouth unconsciously starts forming Vanessa's name. "Yes, Vanessa. I loved her, but... Roman and I, that was... even then, that was something else. And I used to take coke because when I was high, I didn't care I was sleeping with a guy."

His confession sounds strangely normal in the room, not as loud and big as Deniz remembers it being. He's had time to think lately, time to become aware of the things that drove him, then and now.

Flo has a strange, half disgusted, half curious expression on his face. "Uh..."

Deniz grins at him. "Yeah. You asked."

"Yeah." Flo laughs self consciously. Then, "What happened with you and Vanessa?"

"Roman told her the truth. Because he realised I couldn't go on like that, and because he didn't want to see me lie to her and to him." Deniz makes a face. "It wasn't my finest hour."

"And you were clean since then?"

Deniz nods. "Until... Until Roman and I broke up." That, too, sounds strangely like a confession, and he sighs. "Flo, just promise me that you'll be careful. Even if it's cool and other people are doing it, too, that doesn't mean you have to, okay?"

"Yeah." Flo stares at the table for a bit. "Okay. Deniz?"

"Hmm?"

"Thank you for telling me."

"No problem." He claps a hand on Flo's shoulder. "I'm going to go to bed. If you want to talk, you know where I am, yeah?"

Florian's eyes flick to the bedroom door automatically. "I'm not going in there."

Deniz grins. "You have no idea what you're missing, my friend." As he gets up to leave, he catches sight of the look on Flo's face, and laughs.

\--

"What's so funny?" Roman clicks the light on when he comes in. His hair is deliciously tousled, and Deniz takes a moment to appreciate it, feeling his fingers twitch at the thought of running his hands through it.

"Your brother." He pulls his t-shirt up over his head and dumps it somewhere in the vicinity of the laundry pile. "And his terrible fear of anything gay."

Roman smiles lopsidedly. "It's his innocence," he says mock seriously. "He's still got so much to learn."

Deniz kicks off his trousers and slides into bed. "Yeah."

"What were you doing out there so long, anyway? It weren't video games, or I would have heard."

"Hmm." Deniz turns towards him and snuggles, pressing his nose into Roman's shoulder. "We were talking."

Roman's arm comes around him automatically. "What about?"

"Me." Deniz's thumb finds a nipple and he absently rubs a circle around the nub. He presses a kiss to Roman's skin before glancing up at him. "It's nothing."

Roman shifts to accommodate him. "As long as everything's okay."

"Everything's fine." Deniz ignores the fact that he's clinging a little, like a limpet. "Promise."

"Hmm."

Roman's tone is suspicious. It makes Deniz feel ever so slightly guilty, and he pulls away to sit up a little. "Okay, okay, we talked about drugs."

Roman reaches out and cups the back of his head, and Deniz closes his eyes, leaning in until their foreheads touch. After a moment, he opened them again.

"Someone offered Flo pills."

Roman pulls away, eyes wide. "What?"

"Don't freak out. He didn't take them." Deniz takes his hand, absently entangling their fingers.

"What's he thinking? His career, he could-- Does he even know what-- My god, he--"

"Roman. Roman." Deniz finally shuts him up by pressing his fingers against Roman's mouth. "Read my lips. He didn't take them."

Roman takes his hand and pulls it away. "Why didn't he come to me? I mean--"

Deniz smiles. "He came to me."

"Yeah, but... Okay, so you're cooler than me, is that it? I should have known, who am I, only the older brother, I mean--"

"He knew about the coke." A silence settles over their room, and Deniz reaches out to run his fingers through Roman's hair. "That's okay, isn't it?"

Roman nods, a little sheepishly. "Of course that's okay. I don't mind that he talks to you, I just wish he'd come to me with these things."

"He does come to you with things." Deniz shifts closer again. "Other things."

"I know." Roman pulls him in, wrapping an arm around him. Deniz settles, feeling at home. "What did you tell him?"

"I told him what happened, the last time I took coke."

Roman snorts. "He'll have liked that." He gives Deniz a quick kiss. "Sorry, but... your one night stand with Patrick won't have exactly been his favourite topic of conversation."

Deniz grins. "It wasn't."

"Serves him right for asking," Roman replies.

Deniz rolls his eyes. The Wild brothers can bicker and bitch with the best of them. "Anyway, I told him what can happen when you take drugs."

Roman kisses him again, soft and tender, and Deniz closes his eyes. When they come apart, Roman says softly, "You're okay with him knowing?"

Deniz nods. "I suppose. If someone can learn something from it, it's at least been worth it."

It's untrue, that it's been worth it; he would trade those weeks in a heartbeat. But they changed his life, also, and he would likely not be here with Roman if they hadn't happened. He swallows.

"Deniz."

He meets Roman's eyes. "It happened. It led places. I don't know."

"You're okay with where it led?"

He doesn't have to think about that one. "Of course. Roman, I..."

Words fail, and he's not sure what he wanted to say, but Roman merely runs a single finger down his arm, and Deniz turns into the touch. They don't really need to talk about this; he doesn't really need to talk about this.

"Is it okay that I told Flo?"

"Of course. No reason he shouldn't know."

Deniz looks up. "I love you."

Roman kisses him in response.

\--  
 _finis._


End file.
